Tag: poor

A shocking statistic published a couple of days ago shows the extent to which our world is messed up. The top 26 billionaires are as wealthy as 3.6 billion people, according to a report by Oxfam International. The net worth of these mostly American top 26 reached $1.4 trillion last year. Or, to put it another way, the world’s 26 richest people own as much as the poorest 50%. Billionaires, who now number a record 2,208, are growing $2.5 billion richer every single day, while the net worth of the world’s poorest half continues to dwindle.
Since the great recession of a decade ago, the number of billionaires has nearly doubled, a gap that will only increase as China’s economic slowdown sharpens and with Brexit and Trump’s trade war creating more uncertainty.
No wonder there has been an increase in the popularity of extremist parties and individuals, especially on the right.
For all the progress humankind has made, for all our advances in technology and science, for all our progress in human rights, there is a growing gap between rich and poor. The rich will always find ways to protect and increase their wealth, even in times of turmoil and certainty. (Just look at how leading Brexiteers are transferring assets overseas in case their deluded project goes wrong.)
More people than ever are excluded access from a decent, sustainable, even a basic, quality of living. Women suffer the most from equality. Of course, the rich practice philanthropy, and many are genuine about it, but charity is never a substitute for social justice. It simply keeps the current system in place.
As the wealthy gather for their annual powwow at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a plan is needed to more fairly distribute the goods of the earth. Oxfam recommends that nations tax wealth at fairer levels, raise rates on personal income and corporate taxes and eliminate tax avoidance by companies and the super-rich.
Here in Ireland, as we celebrate the centenary of the first Dail, we also have a long way to go to build a more just society.
Action for justice is a Christian imperative. The church has a whole body of teaching built up over decades that speaks about the rights of workers and of the poor, a body of teaching that places the church and its members firmly on the side of the oppressed. In fact, the church teaches that action for justice is a constitutive part of living the Gospel. It is not enough for us to tell the poor, the abused, the unjustly treated, that we will pray for them or that we will give money to charity to support them. We must also do whatever we can to address the injustice. Our faith compels us to be concerned for justice and to work for it.
We must support all efforts to build a fairer, more just world.

Yesterday Pope Francis pulled off yet another surprise. At the end of his five-hour trip to the island of Lesbos to highlight the plight of migrants who are detained there and in similar centres across Southern Europe, he brought 12 Syrian refugees back to Rome aboard his papal airliner. According to reports, the three lucky families, all Muslim, had been chosen by lot from among the 3000 people held on the Greek island.

The pope expressed the hope that the world would “respond in a way worthy of our common humanity” as attitudes to the refugee crisis continue to harden in Europe and elsewhere. Francis’ actions were a calculated attempt to draw attention to the crisis, which he said was the worst since the Second World War. He wanted to offer hope to people left with nothing but the tiniest of hope, and also to prick the conscience of governments who now want to build walls as their preferred response to this humanitarian catastrophe.

Some will accuse the pope of meddling in politics and dismiss his gesture as yet another example of his genius for good PR. But what the pope is doing is simply putting the parable of the Good Samaritan into practice. He is trying to demonstrate that Christian love is about far more than sexual ethics or who should use public restrooms (as some Christians in the United States in particular seem to think) – it is about concrete love of neighbour irrespective of who he or she is.

Francis reminds me of the reason I wanted to become a clergyman. The example of people like Jean Donovan and Oscar Romero, martyred for standing in solidarity with the poor of El Salvador, is what motivated me as an idealistic teenager to give my life to the church. Not lace or the allure of dressing in fancy garments, but grace and a message of hope and love. Not a desire to find refuge in a ‘smaller, purer church’ in combat with the modern world, but to be part of a church on the streets engaging with people as we find them.

That’s what Francis tries to do and teach. Thank God for him and his example.